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Email from mrD: I keep in touch with him though, and he'll probably drop by on IRC. Saxmeister has been missing ever since he posted about his illness. Theo mailed me and said he's back working on the footsteps. So I hope to have an update there soon. As for myself, as some of you know, I've been incredibly busy with other things for the last months, but hopefully things will slow down eventually. We're more or less milestone ready anyway, so it's not that big a disaster.

I disagree. I mainly quick saved a lot in Thief for a couple reasons: 1 ) Because it's a slow-moving game and a lot of time and energy is sometimes involved with safely going from Point A to Point B (to C, D, E, F, etc.) and I don't want to do any of it all over again *if* something goes wrong (e.g., I trigger one NCP who triggers the whole castle's worth of NCPs so I then have 15 guards after me; I get unfairly shot and killed by arrows launched when stepping on a secret platform or moving in front of a camera; or if I just accidentally upset the wrong guard.) I just got to a point where I found it a waste of time (and no fun) to re-do stuff. 2 ) Create save points throughout a level that I can go back to and either re-play if I liked the moments, or quickly show a friend the cool area or situation if I wanted. I think ( 1 ) is the biggest for me, but I'll think about it more. I'm sure I can think of more reasons 'why' but I need to get going here. I have lots of confidence in my playing abilities and decision-making. That's not really the issue for me. Although I could play very slowly (even slower than I already play Thief) to mostly avoid those circumstances in ( 1 ), I think I sometimes go insane if I go too slow or if I've done so much that I don't want to lose my work. Imagine working on a 3-D model in Lightwave for 3 hours without saving and then all the sudden something goes wrong (either system or human error) and you've lost a bunch or all your work. Would you really have the patience to eagerly do it again? Heck, if I write an email for 5 minutes and lose it I get p*ssed that I have to re-type it. BUT, again, I'm keeping an open mind with my future endeavors in game-saving. Aside from game crashes, I might enjoy the painstaking work of very slowly going through a game, or re-doing levels if I need to. Although, going once through Half-Life 2 and Doom 3 levels was enough for me. I would dread to have to go through them again. Heck, I even dreaded going back 2 minutes to my last QuickSave in those games to re-do areas. The games weren't bad, I just sometimes got bored of the repetition and wanted to rush through the levels from the boredom. Re-doing levels in a game like Thief might be different, though -- I think.

Strange thing is I've had this system in place for years, without a problem. This has come up only in the last week.

I have an email forwarding service, so that mail sent to my mindplaces.com address will be forwarded to my ISP, sympatico.ca. This past week I've been having all kinds of email problems--75% of my messages are disappearing. To try and figure out where the problem is, I created a new email address and pointed my forwarding service to it instead. The strange thing is, while most of my mail is now being correctly sent to the new address, some of it is still winding up in my old sympatico mailbox. How could that happen? As an example, I updated CVS last night, and of the three messages sent to mindplaces.com, two were correctly forwarded to the new address, and one was forwarded to the old sympatico.ca. I don't understand how that is even possible.

http://www.mindplaces.com/darkmod/models/models.htm If you are a new modeler or have been gone for a while, check this list to see what has been done already. If you are looking for models to skin, check this page. Please don't post in this thread; I'll be using it simply to record updates to the page. Last update: December 30th, 2004.

Ishtvan, the proposed interface was in addition to the standard Thief functionality we all know and love. See this quote: The point of this idea was that some of us don't always remember if hitting '7' does a rope arrow, gas arrow, or whatever. Domarius said it best: "I too, forget which number key is what weapon in T2, and just cycle around till I get what I want." I'm visual and would appreciate having an alternate (secondary) way of selecting my weapons and tools. If you don't like to select weapons using this completely secondary way, then you just would never use it. It's that simple. Before commenting, please read my last few posts to know what all I'm talking about and again, this is not a replacement of Thief 2's methodology.

Update: I just played the Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory demo last night and it had a weapon HUD interface pretty much like I was proposing. Although it used the ALT or CTRL key (can't remember which) for bringing up the weapon HUD. Although I didn't much care for the execution of the Splinter Cell version, the functionality I was proposing is, more or less, there. Splinter Cell's clunky graphics engine and other stuff going on made it a chore to use the weapon-select HUD. The ideal version for Dark Mod would be smaller, have less intrusivene graphics, be simpler to use and have a smoother scroll-out animation. I still think it could be a nice tool for us to consider for the Dark Mod in the future. Just wanted to provide this update to the thread for future reference.

Well, I downloaded and played the Chaos Theory demo last night... and I wasn't that impressed. It was okay, but the clunky movement and obstructive 3rd-person point-of-view got on my nerves. The game's engine reminded me a bit of Thief: Deadly Shadows, actually. The NCP animations seemed stiff and the graphics were kind've choppy, also. Of course, the latter may be a signal that I need to upgrade my computer soon. There were several elements about the game that I liked, including the stealth and tools (infrared/EMF goggles, fiber-optic cable, etc.) but I won't be getting it mainly because of the 3rd person POV, clunky graphics and lame keyboard controls. I liked that it had two stealth meters: one for visibility and one for sounds.

wow, i have never heard of that mod/expansion pack before. as much as i love t2 - isn't it kinda late for a mod using that engine? then again i have played t2 just last spring and while it definetly looked dated it's was still acceptable and even had it's "oooh pretty!" moments. kind regards gleeful

I don't think I've played Splinter Cell, nope. I think Rainbow Six: Ghost Recon was the last 'Tom Clancy' type of game I played. Oh wait, I maybe played 15 minutes of some Splinter Cell game that came out on the XBOX a couple years back. It was alright, but I think graphics on the PC would be a lot clearer and better; thus, funner to play. Given that I kind've enjoyed Ghost Recon -- although I got sick of the lame AI -- I think there might be hope for me and Chaos Theory.

This whole nonsense about 'finding the last piece of loot' is gone anyway. How would a thief know how much loot is in a building? WHat kind of thief would say to himeself 'I must get exactly 1000 loot from here or I'm not leaving even if it takes me all night and increases by chances of getting caught. Nope, even if I have 995 loot, I'm going to hang aound for the next few hours looking for another 5 gold coins. The loot objectives are the lowest priority in the thief games. There is almost always something more important to be doing on a level, the loot objectives are just tacked on at the end as filler gameplay (I'm not talking about special loot items here which you know are there and are valuble) We'll be imposing time limits for missions (on hardest anyway -if it was up to be it would be all difficulties) - that adds genuine difficulty, you no longer have thinking time, you have to act on instinct, which will really sort the thieves out from the boys. Like a real thief, you'll want to get in and out of the building as quickly as possible, not loiter around all night. Every extra second you stay increases your chances of being caught. The master taffer not only ghosts, but achives his objectives as quickly as possible. You steal what you see on your way, what you know for a fact is there, and you search the usual places people tend to keep loot, you do not systematically search every single square inch of the map incase you missed one copper penny.

I rather have no glint as long as I not forced to find 90% loot just because I play on hardest - which means having to spend 30 tedious minutes at the end of a misison, searching every square inch of the entire map trying to fiind one last gold coin which could be literally anywhere. The loot objectives to be should be optional. A thief would not waste his time in such a way. For a start the thief should not know exactly how much loot is in a building to start with, and he'd only start with a rough estimate of how much loot he thought he should get from a place like this. A thief wants to get in and out as quckly as possible, taking only what he knows for a fact is there, by searching the usual places where loot is kept in most houses, or what's obvious to see. I think we should put a premium on time as well. Doing a job quickly should be seen as more skillful. I would even support a time limit on hardest for the real hardcore taffers - not only do you have to ghost it, but you have to do it in n time as well. I'd like that.

Can you be sure that Doom 3 is stable enough that it will run 17 hours uninterrupted? That is not as self evident as it may sound, because most games are done to get the stable enough to play, which doesn't include stresstesting usually. And I know for sure that I had problems in D3 because every second level exit the game crashed. I would be VERY pissed off, if I would have to replay from the last save point just because the final button causes a crash. Saving is not always because we are pussies, as some seem to think on their narrow track.

Thanks for bringing this up, Domarius. It's been a while since I thought about this. I played many Commodore 64 and Amiga 500 games in the 80s/early 90s. You're right: games then did have many tough, frustrating, or 'how the freak do I get out of this situation' moments. And the games seemed to take longer to beat. I don't know if that's because I maybe played so many different games at once, or if the games were designed to last so long, or what. But damn, I remember being entertained for months on certain games. Of course, I was also younger then... so maybe a week just seemed like a month. Regardless, and therefore, it's sad for me when I'm able to beat games that are made today within a weekend or a week of getting them. Whenever I read that a game has "20" or "30" hours of game play, I'm like WTF? I remember thinking in the mid-90s when I got my first gaming PC how rediculous it was that a game had "40 hours of gameplay." 40 hours?? What a rip-off. It's been a while since I thought about that, so that's why I thank you for the reminder, Domarius. I really wanted to get Prince of Persia for the PC when it recently came out (since I really liked PoP years ago on the Amiga 500), but I won't have anything to do with it because I read somewhere it only had like 15 hours of gameplay. That is absolutely rediculous! This subject has really made me think. On the one hand, I appreciate being able to save whenever I want; and I admit I've enjoyed getting through certain games in a reasonable amount of time. However, I truly miss the challenge of the old games now. Deep down, I think that's part of the reason why Thief 2 is my favorite game ever. I couldn't beat it in a weekend. Not even a week. Granted, I was working a lot at the time, but I think I played Thief 2 for an entire month every night after work and still didn't beat it. I think one of the best things about the game was that I played it non-stop for a long time, but then got somewhat bored with it because it was taking so long to beat it, but then picked it back up again a while later to finish it. The whole experience of getting so much gaming time out of it is awesome, and is not seen in any FPS type of game. (Although, Turok and Super Mario 64 for the N64 did take me a long time to beat for some reason. But then again, Turok ranks up there in my list of favorites; so maybe there's something to this.) I don't want to be able to save whenever I want now. I want to feel a sense of accomplishment when I painstakingly fight my way to the end of a level. I want to have a game (non-RPG or adventure) take me a month or more to finish. I really miss those times. I'm tempted to play Thief 2 again, only this time I won't use QuickSaves. Maybe I'll only allow myself to save twice during a level. This internal reflection has put me back in touch with certain things regarding gaming that are near and dear to my heart. Without this thread, I may never have remembered or taken the time to appreciate the sometimes frustrating, yet gratifying times of early gaming. Thanks again. I knew there was a reason I've always wanted to see a game by oDDity come to light.

Awesome! We were just talking about statues to put in the Pagan map on IRC last night.

Okay, there is really nothing too complicated about how the models are now setup. I tried to simplify the process so that if we decide to reorganize the models in the future, it won't require moving all the skins too. 1. Model resides in its own folder. In this case models/props/decorative/decorative_oversized 2. Textures are stored in models/darkmod/props/textures 3. Material files should look like this. I think the screenshot below is out of date. Your material entries can be named anything you want, as long as they're located in a file somewhere in the darkmod/materials folder, the engine will find them. The last time we went through a model reorganization, the material entries listing full paths became annoying and confusing, because the paths weren't accurate anymore. To avoid that, and just cut down on the amount of clutter in the material files, we decided to name material entries by 'tdm_[name]' where name is something related to the model (not necessarily the model name). That entry is then placed in the material file that corresponds to the folder that the model is in. For example, the material for a chair would go in the "seating.mtr" file, and look like this: (not all our old entries have the 'tdm_' prefix) All textures are placed in the same folder, models/darkmod/props/textures/

Is this now the last version?

I've been giving some thought to our proposed healthbar, and decided we should abandon it. It's long, unweildy and doesn't really fit with our new lightgem. Using oDDity's light-gem designs as a base, I came up with some smaller health displays that would go into the bottom left-hand corner. It takes up very little space that way. Here are three different versions. Depending on how much room we need for the weapon display, the top arm could always be removed. I tend to favour the round one, myself. My thinking was that it be about the same size or slightly smaller than the lightgem itself, tucked away into the corner and only appearing when necessary. It would take up about this much space on the HUD: As far as how it would display health, there are lots of options. It could shrink from the top, shrink from the right, shrink uniformly towards the center, or fade out to black (although that last one is too close to the lightgem working for my liking). I prefer a shrink from the top, like this: I know it is a bit of a departure from the classic Thief health display, but I've always perfered a minimalist HUD. What do you think?

Sparhawk - It's a lengthy discussion because everyone has their very specific and opinionated reasons for wanting the toolset to arrive prepackaged the way they like it. There are many legit arguments in this thread. If there wasn't such a need for lengthy discussion on this, you maybe wouldn't have written about 8 of the last 18 posts here. I'm not sure where you think Ishtvan was being unrealistic; they were all legitimate concerns and make a lot of sense. Bottom line is that a cluster of small icons in the bottom center of the screen would become, essentially, one large object -- obscuring more than if those small icons were separated out between 3 points: lower-left, center and lower-right. When we test, it may not be that bad, but it is a very valid observation for Ish to take note of. No, we don't have hundreds of HUD icons. But the Minimalist Project was made for a reason; we have to respect those reasons. Being thoughtful to usability decisions things like this will help our final product be more polished. It will show users that we care about (and maybe thought a long time about) the pros and cons of every design decision; rather than just implementing knee-jerk reaction features and icons. Are you glad there are big weapon-select gears in T3? Or that T3 loot percentages were initially going to be big fonts popping up smack dab in the center of your view? Or that you fall of ledges in T3 when trying to peek around a corner? More care and thought about these things would've shown us they cared more about usability for us. I figure this thread will be unnecessarily closed soon by the powers that be, so I wanted to get my two cents in. I must say I'm not a huge fan of closing threads. Seems childish. Almost like, "I'm done talking about this with you."

Fett from TTLG here. I'd love to help out with any writing, character dev, spell checking, etc. for the Dark Mod. I did about 50% of the principal writing for cutscenes, briefings, and in-game texts for T2X which should be out before you guys get down to brass tacks on the hardcore writing (???). I also wrote the parody 'Thief: Deadly Simplicities' which can still be viewed on pg. 2 of the Thief Gen forum at ttlg. Don't currently have a copy of Doom 3, but I'll be picking it up. I can send some samples, or would you rather just check out T2X? I have a bit of administrative experience from working on T2X the last 4 years, but you guys seem to have that end of things well in hand. Let me know if I can help in any way - the project looks great so far. p.s. Also sent you an e-mail.

Last time I looked at Thief there were no bullets to shoot with. Similarily in TDM there are also no bullets to shoot with. Does that answer your question?

Um... Doom 3 doesn't do that, does it? Quake 3 didn't. The last game i recall to do that was Unreal 2.

We already established we need the icons to stay. I don't want to have to switch weapons to find out if I selected broadheads or water arrows ten minutes ago. Nor do I want to throw my last flashbomb when I thought I had healing potions selected. I'm sure it will be easy to remove them in the .ini files, but they should be there by default. Ish: I'm starting to agree with you that moving them back to the corners might be better...we won't know for sure until we test it.

I'd like to propose putting the health bar above (or below) the light gem, as shown here. I don't understand why it would need to be a big bulky health bar wasting space in a corner, as the earlier proposal shows: I'd actually like to take things a step further and put a rotating (in perspective) "half-"compass on the right side of the gem. And put the selected weapon with quantity of remaining ammo on the left side -- as shown in the next mockup (water arrow). Note changed ornamentation around gem also: Close-up: Actually, we could even take things a step further by moving the half-compass to instead be directly above the light gem/healthbar, and putting the selected alternate weapon (e.b., flash bombs, health potion) on the right side of the gem. Thus, it'd be easy to see what your left-mouse weapon is by looking at the left side of gem and what your right-mouse weapon is by looking at the right side of gem. Clean, concise, intuitive, your eye only needs to go to one part of the screen to see all your vital info, and no more need to keep big icons in the far-right and far-left corners of the screen like the way they were in Thief 2. EDIT: This last idea should be self-explanatory, but let me know if you want a mockup. Side note: The big weapon/ammo quantity icons would still initially be in the left and right corners (for a few seconds) while you're making your weapon selections, but after you've decided on your weapon, have that big weapon/quantity populate to the center of the screen as small icons by the light gem, as my mockup shows.

A few more buttons have been updated if you want to empty your image cache. The last update should be in a few days.